Barbara Cummiskey Snyder — Multiple Sclerosis Remission (1981)

Barbara Cummiskey Snyder developed multiple sclerosis at age 15, confirmed by spinal tap. Over the following 15 years she experienced progressive decline: seven hospital admissions in a single year, collapse of one lung, near-total paralysis, and eventual hospice-level care following a 1978 evaluation at the Mayo Clinic. Her treating physicians at Central DuPage Hospital and Katherine Shaw Bethea Hospital in Illinois documented her deterioration across multiple hospitalizations.

On June 7, 1981 (Pentecost Sunday), Snyder reported an instantaneous and complete resolution of all symptoms. A physician's note recorded shortly afterward states she "now has none of the findings of multiple sclerosis" and that the tracheostomy tube had been removed. She has remained well for over four decades.

Evidence Assessment

Three physicians are named, two hospitals are named, and one treating physician reportedly wrote about the case — documentation that is unusual relative to typical faith-healing claims. The standard counterargument is MS remission, and it applies. The coincident resolution of a collapsed lung, however, is medically independent of MS and harder to attribute to spontaneous remission alone.

The decisive limitation: no post-healing imaging has been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, and the medical records have not been independently audited outside religious-advocacy contexts. The evidentiary bar is higher than most such claims. It is not equivalent to a formally published case report.